This will be a bit scattered, because my thoughts are that way at the moment. So in advance, to those who read it, sumimasen!

I finished RTK about 3 years ago, and then finished going through Japanese for Everyone and Dictionary of Basic Japanese grammar by the end of 2010. By "going through" it I mean, for RTK I used this site (I just did book 1), and for JfE and DBJG I used anki. I did the kana-->kanji system, so it took me lots and lots of time going through reviews because I would write out all the kanji. I sustained this through the start of 2011, as at that time, the thought of going to Japan was a big motivator for me. But then I lost the drive (for several reasons), and from mid-2011 until now, I haven't touched Japanese. I started med school in 2012, so I tried picking up German instead of Japanese (because it's easier), but that also fell through because of a lack of motivation. So in terms of Japanese, it's been almost 2 years since I've touched anki, so I think I have about 6000 sentences to review (although I haven't opened anki to be honest!)

The reason I say all this is because after thinking about where I'm going with and what I want of my life, the idea of going to Japan is once again in my mind, after many internal struggles and some important realizations. It's unrealistic to think I'll ever be able to work there as a doctor, but I just want to go there (for an extended holiday), and see what happens.

For these reasons, I've been toying with the idea of resuming my studies of Japanese. But I don't think I could handle the kana-->kanji workload. Would it be worth it for me to start eating away at my mountain of sentences, but flipping them so now I'm doing kanji-->kana? I know this will leave me without much writing ability, but I've come to realize that I don't really care that much about writing ability anymore; it's the reading I want.

I guess when it comes down to it, I'd like some reassurance that it's possible to come back from a 2 year gap and successfully conquer an Everest of anki reviews, even with busy study/work obligations. I do remember how much hard work studying Japanese was, and being someone without a truly 'superhuman' work capacity, I'm not sure if I could balance Japanese study with med obligations :/ Thanks for any tips/suggestions/anecdotes you can provide

Kanji>kana sounds good, but if you're going for comprehension I think doing both kanji>kana and kana>kanji is better (like in the core deck). As long as you stop writing answers (though Nukemarine said it helped his assimilation, it's also really time consuming) I think you should be fine.

So here's my anecdote. I burned out after taking the N3 this December and I hadn't studied Japanese in 5 months, but I kept watching anime as a daily distraction. I have forgotten a lot of things but in some areas I also made progress (vocab and listenning comprehension). So even if you don't have time to study everyday, as long as you keep contact with fun Japanese (movies, manga, music...), I think you'll be alright in the long run. But I don't know how is med school, and you probably won't even have time for fun. :/

As a contradictory anecdote to EratiK, I've found that writing out the answers, over a period of less than a month, allows for not only a greater familiarity of the structure involved, but the time involved becomes meager, as your writing ability increases dramatically and the actually process of writing kanji becomes something you don't really have to think twice about.

...yet, contradictory to my contractions, the act of writing will increase your review time. Depending on your average flash card review time (a few seconds isn't really unheard of, once you get used to reviewing the material) writing out the answers could double, triple, etc. your time involved, but it can give you a renewed and bolstered reconnection with the language in the short term (I can't say for the long term, sorry).


What EratiK has touched upon, in respect to "staying in touch" with the language, is something I support 120%. While it isn't actively studying, staying "in contact" with the target language can be useful in keeping certain aspects of structure and word usage "active", in at least a colloquial sense.


Your past efforts haven't gone to waste, they just need a little more kindling to reignite the fire.

I wouldn't skip the writing. I did 漢字->仮名 for the first eight months, and felt like my grip on the written language was tenuous. Plus, I found it personally embarrassing that I couldn't easily write 学校 by hand.

I've done daily writing practice w/ Skritter since January, and it's greatly improved my writing *and* my reading. I timebox to around 30-40 minutes every day so that it's beneficial, but at the same time doesn't dominate my Japanese studies. I think it's been a huge boon. It's a lot easier to internalize the differences between 険、験, and 検　if you're writing them in context. As uisukii says, your writing gets faster in the long run, because you reach the point where you can write the recurring elements (like our phonetic friend in 検) without any thought. Also, it's been really fun this past couple of months to hear spoken Japanese and be able to visualize the kanji for many of the words. That's something I couldn't do as well when only running a recognition deck.

Re: time - yes, writing will slow down your reviews. In my 33 minute Skritter session today, I studied 133 word writings and 231 character writings. With a recognition deck, I could crank through about 200-300 words in the same time frame. On the flip side, I think you'll know the words you write a lot better than the words you simply read. So it's a trade-off.

You can go for a mix of production and recognition. Skritter supports this automatically from the same vocab list (i.e., it shows both writing and reading cards in alternation). I'm sure you can find a way to emulate this in Anki using Reversed cards.

Also, with Skritter, you can control whether you study writing, reading, or vocab. So you could, e.g., turn on just writing practice for 10 or 15 minutes, and then spend the rest of the time doing recognition.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/309657107

Quote:10,000+ Japanese sentences: starting with Japanese-English then moving on to Japanese-Japanese. This deck allows the student to learn words in context, constantly reinforce grammar and advance from beginner to N1 and beyond with (only!) a couple of years of (very!) hard work. This is ideal for someone who has just finished Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.

The description seems convincing.

This could be an alternative for people starting from scratch.
*I take no credit for the creation of this deck

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:I wouldn't skip the writing. I did 漢字->仮名 for the first eight months, and felt like my grip on the written language was tenuous. Plus, I found it personally embarrassing that I couldn't easily write 学校 by hand.

I've done daily writing practice w/ Skritter since January, and it's greatly improved my writing *and* my reading. I timebox to around 30-40 minutes every day so that it's beneficial, but at the same time doesn't dominate my Japanese studies. I think it's been a huge boon. It's a lot easier to internalize the differences between 険、験, and 検　if you're writing them in context. As uisukii says, your writing gets faster in the long run, because you reach the point where you can write the recurring elements (like our phonetic friend in 検) without any thought. Also, it's been really fun this past couple of months to hear spoken Japanese and be able to visualize the kanji for many of the words. That's something I couldn't do as well when only running a recognition deck.

Re: time - yes, writing will slow down your reviews. In my 33 minute Skritter session today, I studied 133 word writings and 231 character writings. With a recognition deck, I could crank through about 200-300 words in the same time frame. On the flip side, I think you'll know the words you write a lot better than the words you simply read. So it's a trade-off.

Can't you get most of the benefit of writing without the time expenditure, if you just imagine writing the character in your head?

Sigh... 6600 cards to review (after suspending all the cards from DOIJG, through which I had gotten maybe one eighth). I have some serious thinking to do... perhaps such thinking should wait for 3 weeks which is when I finish my first semester exams ^^ Seeing so many cards, so much work... I'd hate to think all that time and effort was a waste.

Silty Wrote:Can't you get most of the benefit of writing without the time expenditure, if you just imagine writing the character in your head?

No, although how honest with yourself you are and how good your powers of visualization are can make it closer if you just visualize, -but- if you're visualizing properly it takes the same time anyway. If you're just visualizing the completed character, that's not the same as visualizing writing it, and visualizing writing is not, in turn, the same as actually writing. Actually writing has multiple senses involved which at a very primitive level records more deeply in the memory.

(It actually takes me -longer- to honestly visualize writing the character than to write it. The whole character keeps trying to pop into view rather than letting me imagine each stroke. I'm not sure blocking that whole character out is at all good for the memory building exercise either...)

If you already understand how to write sentences and kana, skip them, and just write the kanji. Use your finger instead of a pen. No need for paper or ink. Just "air write" the kanji you want to remember.

At some point, you will probably get sick of it, though. I sure did.

There's also 書道. It won't work miracles, but when you can write well, it looks pretty freakin' cool. Much cooler than writing with your finger.

Finally-- keep a diary. In Japanese. 日本語日記ノート is the book you're looking for for that. You'll be able to write about the weather and the food you ate with the best of them. (And that, in itself, can be a useful skill.) It might also help jog your memory about forgotten grammar. Also, creating your own content is much more interesting than simply reviewing stuff in Anki all the time, IMO.

As a previous poster said, all sorts of stuff is going on in your body and mind when you write by hand. I did RTK 1 18 months ago and am currently working through an N4 deck, where I write down everything with Kanjis in it whether I am going J->E or E-J. Sure it takes me longer, but stuff just seems to sink in deeper and stay there longer.

You don't need to sit crosslegged wielding a paint brush in a little paper house in your garden, but I still find that paying some attention to your materials is worth it. I recently started using fountain pens, big wet broad nibs some days, extra fine nibs other days, trying out all kinds of crazy ink colours. It made a big difference to my motivation. Buy a block of A3 printer paper and go to town! With any luck you get into a kind of "zone" where the characters just come bubbling up out of your memory. I find it very therapeutic.

Silty Wrote:Can't you get most of the benefit of writing without the time expenditure, if you just imagine writing the character in your head?

Tried it, and no, I didn't get nearly the same benefit. I concur with what markandrew and SomeCallMeChris said: utilizing "muscle memory" makes the characters and words sink in more deeply.

Keeping a diary per rich_f is also a great idea. I've been writing 日記 lately, but mostly on the computer for eventual posting to lang-8. I'm starting to drop back to pen and paper to now to put the work I've done w/ writing characters into action.